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This was the first of our Conversation Evenings, held at The Rose, Stapleford, on 8 January. There was a good turn-out on a winter’s evening to hear Janet O’Boyle introduce the subject before opening up a more general conversation.

Summary:

Production and uses

The main producers are Indonesia and Malaysia. Oil palm is a very productive, cheap and land efficient crop, grown on large plantations and also by smallholders. The main uses in the UK are in processed food, cosmetics and cleaning products.

Problems

Global warming: deforestation, burning, and peat degradation contribute more greenhouse gas emissions than the world’s entire transport sector and makes Indonesia the 3rd largest carbon emitter in the world.

Air pollution: burning causes air pollution, such as the 2015 smog disaster across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Most big companies have stopped burning now but smallholders still do.

Many chemical ingredients can be derived from palm oil and there are websites offering long lists of ingredients that indicate palm oil. But these could also be derived from coconut or other oils or petrochemicals, eg “palmitate” is a fatty acid found in coconut, olive and other oils as well as palm oil.

“Palm-oil free” may just mean that palm oil is not used as a whole ingredient.

Alternatives

Coconut oil requires 7 x as much land for the same yield as palm oil. Soya oil production is already contributing to habitat destruction in Brazil and Argentina. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) argues that these alternatives would contribute to even more biodiversity losses than palm oil.

Butter, containing no palm oil, has twice the global warming impact of margarine, which generally does contain palm oil.

Sustainable Palm Oil

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is made up of palm oil producers and buyers and environmental organisations like WWF. It produced a set of environmental and social criteria that must be complied with to label oil as Certified Sustainable Palm Oil. From November 2018 these include no deforestation, no burning, and some protection for human rights.

Currently 25% of palm oil is certified as sustainable. The market for it is limited, so some is sold as non-sustainable.

Conclusion?

Should we be demanding more genuinely sustainable palm oil to encourage change rather than boycotting it all together? If we avoid all palm oil we reduce the drive for better sustainability. Iceland’s attempt to avoid palm oil in its own brand products proved unachievable. But Greenpeace’s campaign has led one of the biggest palm oil traders to monitor its suppliers and suspend any caught clearing rainforest.

2G3S member Janet O’Boyle attended the Green Living event in Cambridge on 22 September, advertised in our last newsletter. She found some interesting facts about electric vehicles; here is her report:

‘At the Cambridge Green Living Event I was interested in the electric scooter display, a vehicle I hadn’t heard of before. An electric scooter is faster and goes further than an electric bike, and costs less than £3000. So it would be suitable for journeys that are too far for a bike (like my 12 mile commute) but it uses less energy and takes up less road space than an electric car. You can charge it overnight from a 3-pin socket. Further details at www.supersoco.co.uk.

There was also an electric car stand, promoting a tie-in between an octopus energy tariff specifically designed for economical car charging, installation of a home charging point, and lease of a choice of electric cars (from Leaf to Jag) at less than dealer rates (they said). More details at www.octopus.ev.com.’

Cambridge is hosting its first ever Repair Cafe that’s totally focused on fixing children’s games and toys! The event is tying in with the screening of WALL-E. Repair Cafes are free events that match experienced repairers with people who need stuff fixing. Children are invited to drop-in to see one of our repairers before or after one of the films, anytime between 9:30am and 12:30pm. The hosts, Cambridge Carbon Footprint and Transition Cambridge and the 38th Cambridge Film Festival look forward to welcoming all during half-term. Please note, children need to stay with their parent or carer and sit with the repairer during the fix. No booking required, you may have to wait and it’s limited to one item per child. Love toys, hate waste.

2G3S meeting held 30 August 2018We discussed various ideas for future events, including ways to progress our campaign against single-use plastics. As part of this we are publicising the Eco Living Festival in Cambridge on 22 September.

Back to 2G3S: we are hoping to hold an Apple Day next autumn, possibly as part of a wider event. The idea is to combine apple pressing for juice, which we have done before, with talks and activities on how to use your apples (making chutneys, cakes etc).

We will almost certainly hold another Repair Café, and are considering ideas for winter evening activities – something on plastics? green finance and investment? Let us know what you would be interested in.

Fracking: we plan to be part of a delegation to our MP, Heidi Allen, urging her to vote against the government’s proposal to bypass local democracy and planning processes to fast-track fracking.

Photos!We are looking for photos for our new website. If you would like to send in a photo (as jpg format please) that illustrates either our general Mission Statement, or a particular type of 2G3S event, we would be delighted to hear from you. We especially welcome submissions from young people. So please send your photo, plus your age if you think it relevant, to greengroupssss@gmail.com. Photos are welcome at any time, but we shall be making our initial selections by the end of December, and awarding a small prize to the best (ioho!) of those we publish.

Financial help for other groupsFinally, we are a small group of activists. We always welcome more people to our meetings! But we have also decided that one way of advancing our aims is to give financial help to other organisations who wish to put on events. So if you or your group want to stage an event in the 2G3S area which complies with the 2G3S Mission Statement, and need some funding for pump priming, you can apply to us for up to £75. If at the end of the day you can give some or all of this back, that would be great, but is not essential. Contact us for more information.

Great Abington, Saturday 27 OctoberThe Abingtons’ second Repair Café will run at the Village Institute on the morning of Saturday 27 October, 10am to 1pm, with refreshments on sale from Jeremiah’s Cafe. To book, please email the team at repaircafe@theabingtons.org.uk, with as many relevant details as you can find out – such as manufacturer, approximate date of manufacture, model number, nature of fault etc. Alternatively, you are welcome to turn up without booking, and probably join a queue.For more info, visit The Abingtons website.

Do join us at our meeting at 8 pm on Tuesday 16 October at The Rose, Stapleford. The meeting usually includes an ‘open forum’ to discuss green issues – so if there is something you’d like to get off your chest over a drink, or if you’d just like to come and meet us, come along! We’re very informal. We use the small bar to the left of the main entrance, but are sometimes in a quiet area in the main bar – ask the bar staff if you can’t find us!

Throughout September, Camcycle (formerly Cambridge Cycling Campaign) held a month of cycling events in Cambridge. Events included organised cycle rides, exhibitions, ‘Dr Bike’ sessions, a film screening, and a Family Cycling Event.

#Goplasticfreeday campaign is part of the Cambridge Eco Living Festival day’s programming in which a full day of activities at both Lion Yard Shopping Centre and limited events at the Museum of Zoology are planned.